I eagerly wish to enter this discussion without overstepping my own "neutrality", which many consider to be one of the requirements of any members of the SC (hopefully, one day that becomes codified in law as well, so as to make it clear).
I absolutely agree with Claude's two points, and you also know I endorse a model that "gets things done", while being adamant about proper validation and checks on thos "things that were done". This trade-off can be accomplished in many ways. Currently, the way it is done is sadly through "adhocracy" (there is the name again!): a situation arises, someone is hesitatingly pointed out to fix things, and we go on with our lives as if nothing has happened.
Claude's recent example is the best possible one for the "adhocracy" method. The city was in ruins; there was no quorum on the RA, so the legislative aspects were unfortunately stopped to a standstill. But the city needed to be rebuilt. Usually, that task relies on the shoulders of the Guild, but it needs a mandate, a budget, and some form of after-the-fact validation. This was an emergency, so all the "normal" procedures were suspended, so that things "could get done". And they were! Very successfully, if I might add, and without any fuss or drama afterwards.
Reflecting on the past, what can we see? First, that there is no method to deal with "emergencies". In this case, an "emergency" is any act that needs proper validation by a RA with a quorum. There is also not a clear mandate in several areas. Some groups are "empowered" without legislation; another example is what I amusingly call the "Police Force" — the group of people with the power to ban griefers or return their objects. Although the banning is legislated, in the sense that this action has to be validated on a SC hearing, it's shaky. Who are the members of the "Police Force"? Who leads them? Who is accountable if the "Police Force" does not behave properly and abuses its (unwritten) power? Why do I have to write "Police Force" with quotation marks? 
This is not the only case. The Sim Planning Committee is another ad hoc structure, which I refered elsewhere, and which is working rather well, despite some hiccups. It meets regularly, has someone to set on the ageda, delegates tasks, publishes reports, makes recommendations. I would say that so far it has been one of our best examples of good adhocracy at work — a body of interested citizens that are actually working flawlessly. They don't even have any "power" except the one delegated by the RA, so all is proper and correct. The model works.
However, the next time any long-term planning is needed (say, for the third sim), a new body has to be created. New legislation has to be passed; a new group is established; a new "charter" is created; and the same issues are going to be discussed again: who sets the agenda, when will the new group meet, and so on.
Now, creating "commitees" or "comissions" to deal with a problem, report the findings, and get back with the results to the proper authorities are all part of a democratic process — since there is delegation, supervision, management, overseeing, accountability, and so on. Still, it's inefficient. Why should we have a different "planning committee" every time we need to plan anything? Even small towns have a "urban development department" — specialists and professionals (architects, civil engineers, landscape architects, the odd environmentalist expert, etc.) that work on urban development all the time, and that report to either the Mayor directly or to a City Council. In a RL environment that constantly needs hints and tips from the urban development department, this is a body of all city councils (even tiny ones — where you might just have one person).
We tend to view the above, concrete examples as being part of the Guild. Ie. the Guild should do the "policing", the Guild should do the emergency rebuilding, the Guild should do the planning. In a sense, under the current model, it would make sense to have a super-Guild that deals with all these issues. However, the Guild has traditionally not worried about them directly — unless the RA has given them this mandate, which they haven't (the original city in Anzere, despite its many flaws, had a provisional government which worked that way: a plan was devised by the proto-RA, and the proto-Guild assigned several teams the work to follow that plan. The details of if a prim should be blue or gray was not discussed at the RA level, but at the Master-Journeyman-Apprentice level. Still, naturally, the model that worked for Anzere is outdated and does not work any more).
The problem we have right now is that the Guild, effectively, does not have executive powers directly — only the RA has them. The RA can obviously delegate things to the Guild (and has done so very successfully in many cases — think about the MoCA) but often the delegation of powers stops very early in the process. When the Guild needs more input to continue their work, it has to go back to the RA for deliberation — which takes months.
Now, the City of Neufreistadt has several things that can be run "slowly" — ie. long periods of discussion, extending over several months, for finally issuing a deliberation that the Guild can work with — and these examples can be successfully implemented this way. For instance, although we have the ability — financially, politically, and in terms of required human resources — to add a second sim since perhaps December 2005, we are only mid-way through the process now. It's all good; it's not critical for the continuing of Neufreistadt. One can argue that the same can be said for the banking system; the first bills were dated of the beginning of 2005, and still unimplemented. Again, that is no crucial function. The worst that can be said about that very-long-term planning is that once things finally get a deliberation, they're so hopelessly outdated in this ever-changing world, that they have to be discussed again. That's ok; again, a slow pace can work for us in some cases better than a harsh, risk-taking opportunity.
However, as we grow, we also need to deal with immediacy: ie. banning a griefer, returning a house that was "broken" by the SL permission system, replying to an invitation from a group to "join forces" together, setting up some crucial things to deal with emergencies — these become more and more important, and also have a much worse effect if they are unattended. A good example is griefing. If the SC had to meet (and God knows how the SC is even more crippled in that regard than the RA!) every time a griefer enters the City, we would be completely in flaming ruins before we had a chance to set up the meeting, not even to speak about an eventual deliberation.
When we're pressed to do things quickly, they happen outside all the boundaries of our normal rules and procedures (adhocracy again). The people that are online or available gather together and fix things; later there can be a posteriori validation. Or not at all; since things get fixed, why bother to mention them? A good example is the set up of the wiki, forum, site, etc. While the wiki, for instance, has a very long and thorough definition of what the whole 2D-side of Neufreistadt should look like — something discussed and changed by three or four people over several months, one of which isn't even online any more for seven months! — the truth is that the current things that are online are far from the intended purpose. For instance, one very simple requirement — integration with a single login to every area — has never been accomplished, just because it would take too long, using the tools that currently are available. Web design was never approved nor commissioned. Still, we use those tools every day. It's another example where things were done because they needed to be done, but no one validated them, no legislation was passed to support them, and there is no way to complain (through the formal channels) if people disagree with things.
This is what happens when we rely much more upon the personality of people, in whom we trust, than in the system of laws that are supposed to be the founding pillar of Neufreistadt. If someone emails Gwyneth, our de facto webmaster, saying "Gwyn, we need a 'links' section on the website", the arrogant Gwyn can answer: "What for?" And the next questions will be: "Why do you ask for it?" and "Did the RA approve it?" and finally "Why don't you do it on your own?? I have more to think about right now". What can the democratic processes in Neufreistadt do in this case? Well, emit legislation to the effect: "By NL5-6, the RA demands that a new section is created on the web site, to be used for adding links". All great, but to whom is this order targeted? The RA even approved a bill for establishing the webmaster as a civil servant, but that role was not fullfilled. So this order would go to the de facto webmaster, who would dismiss it and say: "hey, guys, if you want changes, do it on your own; I'm not the official webmaster. Oh, and BTW, if you want to do it on your own, please pay for the registration of the domain name".
(As you are all full aware, this is exactly what happened before the 'new' website went up; replace 'Gwyn' with 'Ulrika' and you'll see what I mean)
Many at this point would probably laugh, because they trust me, and know that I wouldn't ever do such a thing But the truth is, you don't know. For all that you know, I can have a child tomorrow as well, and use that pretext as emotional blackmail to have things going as I want them to be (again, the likeliness of that happening is about as high as finding sentient beings on the Moon, but nothing is impossible ). Worse than that, Neufreistadt has lots of new citizens — and more are to come — and they can only read the following bits from our history: "so you had a lot of drama from allowing someone to run the websites, and when you finally overcame that, you let someone else run the websites as well? Why shouldn't history repeat itself?" The usual argument that "because we trust Gwyn" can always be debunked by someone who will ask: "but didn't you trust Ulrika before as well?"
I hope the point I'm trying to make is clear. While naturally several other things are important — and juggling priorities is the hardest task for any RA — I personally fear the lack of indefinition from clear delegation of powers very worrying. I'm not worried at all about the long-term planning, and I can live with the concept that in some cases (new sim, banking system), a decision that would take 2 weeks under a different model can take one year or more under the current one. I see it as a trade-off for living in a democratic community that is still on its infant stages. But other things are much more worrying, when ad hoc structures are set into place, and everybody shyly forgets about them — if they don't give us a problem, and deals with something that needs to be dealt with, let them stay — until it's too late.
In my role as Dean, for instance, I have advised "newcomers" to the RA in the past that the attrition at the RA is its biggest drawback. There was a reason why the terms were only 4 months. After the first 2 months, the "eagerness to serve" becomes secondary. If you look at what happens overall in SL, a 2-4 month period is the longest that most people are willing to do voluntarily and for free; it's not typical of Neufreistadt, but of SL overall. This means that a RA that wants to act fast has to make sure that it works quickly and early, in an intense way, since after two months, the probability of having a quorum decreases over time. Notice that this happened on each and every term. We pinpointed early on that the fault was having two many members (7 instead of the 5 we have now), and so the quorum was never met. We have now 5 people, and we still don't get quorums after 3 months. We could reduce it to three people, and we would see the same happening again. And finally, someone crazy enough would suggest that all the power gets into one person, and we'd be doomed.
Does this mean that the RA, as a body, is unworkable? Not at all. What is flawed is the notion that the RA, as an executive body, does not work — we have proved that in our 20 months or so of existence. Despite the lack of procedures, for instance, the SC or the Guild don't get paralysed in the important things if they don't have a "quorum" (which doesn't even apply to the Guild, as a matter of fact). The Chairs at the SC can pronounce judgement on any hearing that is set, even without a Dean; there is no legal requirement for a "collective of judges" to listen in to all cases. And the tradition that members of the SC shold refrain from posting their ideas publicly — because they could be viewed as policy and not opinion — shows how well this concept is in the minds of the citizens.
The RA, however, has no such luck. Burdened with the task of having to meet to deliberate and to pass legislation, an individual member of the RA has no power at all — no matter how many votes they've earned at the last election. Only the collective has any power; but when the collective is unable to meet — something that has an increased difficulty because of the so many different timezones involved — it's power is virtually zero. But that can't be! The ultimate source of power is the representative assembly; it's the only one validated by the citizens by their vote; everything depends on a working RA to, well, work.
So we can't have our first and most important body paralysed and unable to deliberate. It's an abomination and perversion of reality. I fear that history taught us abouty what happened with "too weak" RAs: at the first time of trouble — "emergencies" — ad hoc "leaders" emerge and effectively control the power, delegating trivial and redundant tasks to the non-working RA. In Neualtenburg, that happened under Ulrika. In RL, that happened with the fascist regimes in Europe.
On a positive and optimist note, I don't want to give the (very wrong) impression that I think that "fascism" (either from the left, the right, or any other direction) is imminent in Neufreistadt, and my reasoning is always the same: this will not happen because, sooner or later, residents of SL will "give up" and turn to other things — again, after 2-4 months, most people give up. Particularly resilient people might be stubborn enough to hold out longer, but sooner or later, they'll go away as well. On the other hand, I think that we are all worried enough about the lack of operationality of the RA, to the point that both parties currently elected wish to introduce a clear way to delegate the executive powers — only the model for doing so differs, but I'm sure they'll come to a compromise (as we are usually fond of doing ). In my mind, this is the most crucial aspect of this upcoming term. Speaking personally from my own hill that looks back to the past, our city has always struggled with a too weak RA, and the opportunity of "threat" came always from outside the RA. Almost always it was a inability to deliberate that brought the RA to a standstill — either through improper formulation of the Constitution, giving too much power to groups outside the RA; or by the lack of quorum.
It is quite clear to me that both issues have to be addressed at the same time. We cannot whip the members of the RA to remain awake in session 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We cannot expect them to meet at odd hours, have emergency meetings, and deal with all issues inside their tiny group. It's unpractical and, in my opinion, impossible — we would have much higher attrition if, say, a bill was passed to have the RA meet every day, to be able to deal with the ongoing progress of the city.
Instead, a delegation of some powers is the only choice — and by this I don't mean the isolated decision of delegating the promotion of an event to a person, and then remove that "power" when the event is over, but setting up a framework of power delegation is the key. Having all the legislative and executive powers to command, the RA should work out the best way to deal with them. In RL, this means standing or permanent commissions; but it also means that the executive powers are delegated to a specific group or body of people that work all the time, giving the RA the required time to deliberate and discuss the far-ranging strategy and the overall policies.
I bring up again the example of the Sim Planning Committee. So far, I think it was one case of success. The SPC is apolitical; it is empowered (in a limited way, but that is out of the point) by the RA, and directly overseen by the RA; it distributes the load of planning among several people with the required skills: urban planning, finance, legal. It has a procedure to meet and to reach decisions inside the group. It reports (back to the RA) regularly. The meetings are open and everyone can join them or read their transcripts. It even sub-delegated tasks to sub-commitees — further advancing the specialisation. But people also work "at home" (ie. outside the environment of SL) to bring their views back, already polished and in the proper format, for all to discuss and eventually reach a decision. So the SPC was able to do in a few weeks almost all required tasks, it raised new and complex questions that were unknown (ie. the need for void sims; the eventual need of relocation, etc.). And in a few months, when the sim is built, this awesome institution of Neufreistadt will disband, disappear without a trace.
The interesting bit (although not totally unexpected for me!) was that this Sim Planning Commitee raised questions and doubts that were not even in their jurisdiction. Models of political organisation were briefly discussed, although totally besides the point. Why didn't that surprise me? Because it is indeed in the hands of those who have a complex, multi-skilled task to solve, that "marginal" ideas emerge and need to be addressed. Neufreistadt, collectively seen as the sum of all citizens, is like that; but even smaller groups have the same problem, even if their focus is much narrower.
I find it very sad, and that's why I personally dislike this model. We clearly identified all the problems with the planning of a new sim and devised ways to deal with them. A pseudo-framework was established, sometimes with a bit of legislation, sometimes naturally emerging from the group itself (like establishing procedure and deciding that to make the meetings more productive, sub-committees needed to be appointed). While nothing in this world is perfect, the work of the SPC was actually quite good for an "improptu" group. So good, as a matter of fact, that I can only wonder why it doesn't play a permanent part of Neufreistadt. We will need Urban Development all the time. We will need financial re-evaluation all the time. We will need promotion, events, and ideas to attract tourists and potential citizens all the time. As a matter of fact, under this name or another, we need an SPC all the time!
But once Colonia Nova is up — the SPC will be disbanded.
The arguing against its continuing existence is mostly one based on "tradition" and "delegation of permanent powers". Traditionally, one reasons that we truly have only three branches in government. But even that is not entirely correct. The Neufreistadt Bank even has a Guild-issued Charter, and although there is considerable overlap, it works under that Charter. Some legislation has been created for that fine institution, although it addresses only a tiny bit of what is really needed. There is a Chamber of Commerce, with some rough guidelines of what it should do. Again, legislation is spurious, vague, and only touched the very tip of the iceberg (who appoints people to the CoC? How do companies register with it? And so on), but not totally unexistent. So, these institutions — or an embryo of them, at least — do exist, they're just un-functional. This is mostly because they are created without a charter or at least a purpose that establishes their fundamental way of working. Worse than that, they might have similar needs, but they have different charters. There is no uniformisation. And worse than that, who do they report to? Ok, apparently both report to the Guild... but... who validates the Guild's overseeing, since the Guild doesn't have an internal structure, no procedures, and no transparency? This is not a criticism to our most excellent Guildmeister — again, we are lucky to have had wonderful Guildmeisters in our past, but on the other hand: why should a democratic city be based only on "luck" and "having nice people", if all the original intent of Anzere/Neualtenburg/Neufreistadt was to create something that lasted well beyond the people that were part of the city, and was independent on their "niceness" or "competence"?
Patroklus is much better than me at condensing this thought to its conclusion. On June 2, the citizens reacted wonderfully well to an unexpected emergency, by self-organising themselves and volunteering (even many non-citizens did help us!). All that happened because we have "nice" and "wonderful" people around us — which is great, we're attracting nice people, hooray for that It's great to see that everyone feels enough about their place in the city to come together in the case of great need. Again, hooray, since this feeling is far from being common — in SL or RL, it does not matter. But did it help us to fix what was wrong in the past? No. I think we felt so excited that things were rebuilt so fast — and better, to an extent — that we dismissed the whole idea after the fact. We're not "stronger" just because we have "nice people" around. We should get stronger to give the opportunity of having these "nice people" fitting into the working structure of Neufreistadt, by validating their efforts inside a legal framework, and by making sure that, if the "nice people" are not so nice as we thought they were, we can still work with them.
This is for me the basis of the future workings of Neufreistadt: an end of the adhocracy that gets "nice people" together to make decisions well beyond their mandates to decide. Instead, an institutionalisation of those ad hoc groups. Making them permanent, legal, organised, fully transparent, and accountable to whomever they have to be accountable to. We have all the tools to do so — unlike any other group in SL, we can vote for those "tools" to be deployed.
So, hopefully, the next time we need something to be done, we don't have to rely upon "nice" people to do it for us, but we can have legitimately empowered people to do that.
